Not very lesbian at all. 

Any better suggestions? In 1985, Bechdel/Wallace identified Alien as a prototypical lesbian movie because the two women in it get to talk to eachother about the monster. Has there been anything since then? 

*The Bechdel test [from Wikipedia]

The [Dykes to Watch Out For] strip popularized what is now known as the Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel/Wallace test, the Bechdel rule, or Bechdel’s law. [Alison] Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the test, which appears in a 1985 strip entitled “The Rule”, in which a character says that she only watches a movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

I cried at the beginning when Orfeo was mourning the loss of Euridice, because of the utter completeness of loss through death. And I cried when Euridice was contemplating a life loving someone who did not return her affection, because that’s what life with Mark is often like. (Euridice determined that death was preferable.)

After the opera Mark went home with somebody else, and I cried again.

Later in question period she pointed out that you could do the same thing with a mass-produced commercial object. So it wasn’t clear that the deliberate cultivation of webby thinking the way she illustrated it would necessarily lead to a commitment to the ethical treatment of animals; she just chose to present it that way. Which was confusing, because she initially seemed to be saying something specific about the relationships between dogs and people, but when she explained what she was saying it was no, she was saying something about people, that when you look at our connections in a webby way we have more in common than we might like to think.

Which seems to be a very old notion. One that has more to do with adulthood and becoming one’s parents and looking fondly at people who are young and leaving their parents than it does with dogs or cyborgs or naturecultures.

But given that I don’t know what a natureculture is, is not for me to say.

What disappointed me was her reply to someone asking how to apply her philosophy in such a way as to convince evil profit-centred capitalists of the necessity for veganism. She said that thinking of meat-eaters as concerned with profit did them a disservice, and that while it might be unfortunate that the entire planet wasn’t vegan at least there were active movements to improve the treatment of domestic animals, such as cage-free rearing of chickens and that we should think about these and be optimistic.

When sharing a planet with six to seven billion other people who are continuing to multiply, when many of them are simultaneously going to increase their abilities to consume, when the vision of the future is an increase in people increasingly competing for increasingly limited resources, when what we know of true poverty is that it breeds a philosophy of “life sucks and then you die,” what the **** does the niceness of cage-free rearing of chickens have to do with anything?

But I get the impression that I might simply not have understood any of the lecture at all. Like my mother says: “Sometimes you can’t tell whether you don’t get the joke or whether you get it but you just don’t care.”

Anyway. Went to something presented with much smaller words on Thursday, and even illustrated. With moving pictures. I’m pretty sure I understood it. Turtles Can Fly, a fictional movie about children in wartime in Kurdistan acted by war-injured children. I almost walked out in the middle of it. The experience recalled visiting television-owning friends in 1985 at the height of famine in Ethiopia. They would be watching the news and I would be desperately ordering them to Turn that thing off! “Why? What’s the problem? Aren’t you interested in international news?” That’s not the point! Maybe you can invite starving children into your living room to die in front of you while you don’t lift a finger to help them. Maybe you think that’s interesting. But I can’t do it and I don’t want to know how you can. Turn that thing off!

Am still a little shaken.

Hugs to all, dogs and children especially but chickens and academics too.

After trashing Supertex Monday I left for work and continued mulling. It was still bothering me. But then I figured out what the essential technical problem was with the movie the filmmaker wanted to make. The basic question of the movie was “What does it mean to be a Jew when you are living in a place with no Jews?” (Though it was phrased rather differently in the film itself, rather “Q: What is a Jew without a hat? A: A Jew in a Porsche!”) Phrased my way, the question becomes more interesting. But in the movie it was illustrated by having a Dutch Jew living in a place with no Jews (Amsterdam) who thought of himself as Dutch… repeatedly confronting Jews who think of themselves as Jews. So, like, is Amsterdam a Jewish space or not? If it is, the question disappears. If it isn’t, then the structure of the movie makes no sense.

Phew!

(According to Mark, while there is a small Jewish community in Amsterdam, it is secular. And… there are no bagel shops.)

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 11, 2004]

Then on Thursday I read promotional articles about it in the local A&E weeklies and was very surprised to note that it was being touted as an anti-drug movie. I hadn’t noticed that theme. I double-checked with Mark, and he had. Ok, so I am somewhat oblivious. We knew that. But then he said he agreed with me that it wasn’t the dominant theme.

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
Y Latina (a latina occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

*** *** ***
Then Mark downloaded Supertex from BitTorrent and we watched it on Friday. It’s a Dutch movie, made in Holland with Dutch actors who all speak English and Yiddish. There is no Dutch version. He watched it for the Dutch nostalgia value and I watched it for the rag trade theme. Well, it was awful. At first I thought it was just clumsy which I really don’t mind: if I made a movie it would be very clumsy. But then there were some simply terrible scenes and even I had to admit that it was simply a bad movie. The father dies and the mistress and the bright son – who had been fighting like teenagers with PMS up until then – fall tearily into one another’s arms and make love. The moralizing about Jewish identity made me gag: happiness lies in speaking Yiddish, wearing a yarmulke and marrying a submissive, silent woman. Oh, and in carrying on your father’s business even though you have determined that it’s a bad business decision.

Even Mark was disappointed in the Dutch nostalgia value department: people kissed in greeting only twice (not three times, the way they do in Holland) and no, he has never seen anyone with side curls in Amsterdam, never mind large communities of them impeding traffic on Saturday.

Mark knows the filmmaker and says he was one of the few people in Holland who supported the US invasion of Iraq.

Special interest points:
N Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man).
N Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else).
N Crazy (from the point of view of a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world).
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome).

So I can confidently say that there is no reason to watch this movie at all.

[originally transmitted by e-mail August 9 2004]

Special interest points:
Y Lesbian (features: at least two women, who talk to each other, about something besides a man)
Y Woman-of-colour (a woman of colour occupies the screen by herself without sharing it with anyone else)
N Crazy (features a visibly unhinged person trying to get by in the real world)
N Aspie (features someone who appears to have Asperger’s syndrome)

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]

I carefully shield myself from unpleasant things I can’t do anything about, which means I don’t watch the news. So this was the first time I ever saw George W in action.

Mean little bugger, isn’t he?

[originally transmitted by e-mail June 30, 2004]

The pizza was exactly what I expected of pizza and I was pleased.

The movie (”Sugar Sweet”) was exactly what I would have expected of an out lesbian’s first feature commissioned for $40k by a straight Japanese porn channel, and I was pleased. It was funny; featured smart and attractive characters that resembled people I know; presented a utopia of lesbian community in Japan that the director explicitly stated does *not* exist; was intercut with hot sex scenes whether or not they bore any relation to plot; the screen was entirely devoted to asians, most of whom were lesbians; and was followed by the filmmakers interviewing each other. I was pleased.

What’s not to like about pizza and cheese?

M. didn’t like it; he thought it was like a student film. Whatever: I don’t see any relationship between the two observations. Besides, in my experience student films are much shorter. In the interview the filmmakers had been quite straightforward that straight men watching their movie appeared to be less than enthusiastic; they thought this was funny but not unexpected. M. fit right in with the crowd in this respect. He’s certainly entitled: I fit right in with the crowd myself often enough. (Note that the possession of a penis is not the only impediment to the enjoyment of Sugar Sweet. Anne and Claire didn’t like it either. I was entirely alone in my delight tonight.)

M. went on to inform me that I only liked it because I thought it was ideologically correct. Which comment I was so furious at him for that he isn’t coming home tonight. I don’t know what he plans to do instead and I don’t care. (Anne and Claire refrained from telling me what I thought. Anne often tells me what she thinks, and I listen, but she has never told me what I think. Claire is more discreet, preferring to listen and learn. We parted with kisses and hugs and promises of more movies.)

***

SUGAR SWEET
http://www.seattlequeerfilm.com/02/films/sugar.html

Desiree Lim, the first out queer filmmaker in Japan to direct a lesbian feature, turns in a delightfully sassy, saucy and sexy feature debut. Naomi is an aspiring TV director who pays the bills by directing lesbian porn. Her callous male bosses deride her work for its unsuitability for male viewers, and her lesbian friends see her as a sellout. Her only confidante is “Sugar,” a secret chat-room friend on the Internet. When Naomi gets a chance to direct an episode of a popular “matchmaking” TV show, she casts her friend Azusa, who’s experiencing lesbian bed death with her long-term girlfriend and looking to spice up her life. Romantic sparks fly on the set – scorching even Naomi! Can she keep her job, her dreams and Sugar – especially Sugar – online? Delightful and whimsical, SUGAR SWEET creates a fascinating, fun girl world of sex toys, gossip and romance.

***

Oh, and yesterday M. was really angry with me for finding the link below distasteful (”It’s culture”; culture is immutable, constant, unchanging; because culture is entirely resistant to thought in general and Dutch culture is resistant to my thought in particular, I am wrong to find buffoons in blackface distasteful; by persisting in my wrongness when instructed to immediately desist, I am demonstrating a profound lack of education and intellectual depth and honesty). And no, I didn’t say “This is gross” or “Dutch people suck” or “Holland is a racist country.” I said “I find this distasteful.”

http://portal.omroep.nl/sinterklaas2003?0FlashV=6

I need help.

[originally transmitted by e-mail November 30, 2003]

Saw Stormy Weather, a lovely story about mental illness and comparing Belgian and Icelandic ways of coping. The Belgian psychiatrist wants her patient to stay with her, in Belgium, where she can live forever in a well-funded hospital with lots of pleasant, well-spoken, polite and slightly dysfunctional patients and be tended to by trained professionals who restrain her kindly and reluctantly when necessary, addressing her as Madame when they regretfully have to sedate her. The patient’s husband loves her and wants her to live at home with him in Iceland where there is no psychiatrist and no treatment. He’s a little dingy himself and would totally lose it if his wife were taken away from him and institutionalised. (This is a terrible movie about psychiatry, by the way. In real life it’s not nearly so either/or. Hospitals are largely for keeping mentally ill people safe, or for evaluating them (both short-term propositions), or for offering outpatient care (a longer-term proposition). There is absolutely no reason a mentally ill person like the woman in this movie couldn’t be evaluated in Reykjavik and sent home to her family and GP with some prescriptions. And no, psychiatrists do not work by selecting a single patient out of the hospital or treat them by taking them shopping and on extended field trips. If a patient is well enough to handle going into a store without freaking out they probably don’t need to be hospitalised. Also, in this fantasy Belgian hospital mental patients were allowed to stay in bed as long as they wanted to. Not in any psychiatric ward I’ve ever known!)

But, whatever, yes it’s a terrible movie about psychiatry but still a lovely movie about mental illness, and coping, or not; and about the burden of trying to act as if everything were okay when it isn’t. Highly recommended. Even if you have no interest in mental illness, the Icelandic scenery is beautiful. (Plus it meets the Alison Bechdel lesbian criteria.)

A little while ago I mentioned Matchstick Men in the context of a theme of older men paired with much younger women that had become rather tedious. Well, Matchstick Men starts out as a totally refreshing movie about mental illness. I was thrilled to see Nick Cage up there on screen representing me: visibly unhinged, dependent on meds, and getting by. Even getting by rather well. Then the dénoument ruins everything. Go ahead and see it anyway: it’s rather more likely to be playing in a theatre near you than Stormy Weather is.

Does anyone have any suggestions for movies about mental illness? Or psychiatry? I don’t want a movie where mentally ill people are simply mildly eccentric and flourish when someone is nice to them. Someone who flourishes is not ill.

I never saw Girl, Interrupted. How was that?

[originally transmitted by e-mail October 14, 2003]